I Spent Six Days Protecting Tupac on His Deathbed

About eight months before Tupac Shakur was shot down during a drive-by in an intersection east of the Las Vegas Strip, videographer Gobi M. Rahimi got into a water gun fight with the rapper in an L.A. backyard.

It was early 1996, and Rahimi—who, with his partner Tracy Robinson, worked on music videos for Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, and Pharcyde—had been called on to meet with Tupac. The rapper, his family, and members of his Outlawz crew were grilling in the backyard, smoking weed, and shooting each other with water guns. Pac took a break to talk money over the phone with Death Row Records boss Suge Knight. Rahimi decided to pick up his gun. He squirted it into the air, and within a few seconds, the Outlawz had him surrounded. They sprayed him; he tried to hit them back. And suddenly Tupac broke into the middle all of it.

"'That's what I'm talking about. This motherfucker won't give up. All you motherfuckers are attacking him. That's a Crazy Iranian,'" Rahimi recalls Tupac saying. "That's the first time he called me the Crazy Iranian. And at that time I was like, 'I love this guy.'"

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In the months leading up to his death, then 30-year-old Rahimi worked on or directed most of Tupac's videos, including "2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted," "How Do U Want It," and the rapper's final video, "Made Niggaz." Today, he's working on a film called 7 Dayz about the final week of Tupac's life.

Amid growing tension with Death Row Records, Suge convinced Tupac to go see Mike Tyson's fight against Bruce Seldon at the MGM Grand on September 7. That night, after a scrap in the MGM following the fight, Tupac and Suge made their way to a party at Knight's Club 662 in a black BMW 750. At 11:15 p.m., on the corner of Flamingo Road and Koval Lane, an unidentified white Cadillac pulled up to the right of the BMW and opened fire. Tupac was hit four times and rushed to University Medical Center. This is what happened, in Rahimi's words, between the shooting and Tupac's death in a hospital bed at 4:03 p.m. on September 13, 1996.

September 7 was Tracy, my partner's, birthday. So I kind of convinced her and a few other production people to go to Vegas to celebrate. She was very against the idea because she didn't want to be around Death Row people and didn't enjoy the idea of Vegas. I kind of knew we had to be there for some reason.

We made it out there. I tried to get us tickets to the fight, and I couldn't get into the fight, so we went to 662 because we planned on meeting Tupac there. We were hanging out in the club, and the atmosphere was just off. There was a bunch of gangbangers and policemen. The place was filled with cops and unsavory characters. I remember Nate Dogg was walking through the crowd up to every group of people he recognized, and he finally walked up to us and said, "Pac and Suge have been shot."

Tupac Shakur and Marion

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We found out that he had been taken to University Medical Center. We went there, and I remember one of the first things I saw was Kidada Jones and his cousin Jamala crying on the pay phones. Everyone else that was in the ER waiting room was Suge's people. It was his mom and dad, it was his lawyer, it was Reggie Wright—and there was no one there for Tupac. It was just us. Within an hour, the nurse came out and walked up to Suge's mom. Suge's mom said, "How's my baby, how's my baby?" And the nurse said, "Ma'am, your son's fine. He got hit with a piece of shrapnel. Probably a piece of glass. We're going to give him a couple of stitches, and he's going to be taken to a private room within an hour." Then she turned to us and said, "Unfortunately, for Tupac, it's not the same situation. His right lung was shot, so we had to remove it. There will be a series of reparative operations, and it will probably take 12 hours."

I remember Nate Dogg was walking through the crowd up to every group of people he recognized, and he finally walked up to us and said, "Pac and Suge have been shot."

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Basically, that was the first night of me sitting watch from 12 to eight in the morning for the next six nights. The scariest thing about that night is that it was really just me and Tracy. We were the only ones from Pac's camp. His fiancée and his cousin were just bawling in the corner. They tried to get some Death Row security but couldn't find anyone who were normally his two security guards. We were just scared shitless. For me, it was like Enzo the baker in The Godfather. We had no clue what to do, but we knew we had to be there. The next day, we tried to get him moved from the first floor where you could see into his room, but we got no help from the hospital administration.

It was the scariest six nights of my life. There were undercover FBI agents, the police weren't helping, I got one of the death threats. The marketing director came up to me on the third day and said, "They called the Row, they're going to come finish him off." Then he walked away. So I called Vegas PD and said, "Send the troops—they're going to come finish Tupac off." The lady came back on the phone and said, "Sir, we're a little understaffed right now, so if anything should happen, go get the foot patrol in the hospital." Immediately, I was like: Something's a little off here. I remembered that earlier that day we had a press conference, so I called all the local news stations and said, "Every hour there will be a news conference." And I thought, "At least there will be people here with cameras if shit should go down."

The black car in which rapper Tupac Shakur was fatally shot by unknown drive-by assassins as he was riding with Suge Knight.

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It was just chaos and no support. We didn't trust Death Row—we didn't trust anyone. After all of that happened, there was a southern old security guard in the corner, and he started chuckling and was like, "Son, I've got to tell you, last year there was a white rodeo star who broke his leg, and the Vegas Police Department gave him four policemen and six wagons for his family and friends to be comfortable."

I thought, "Isn't that a bitch that the number one rapper in the world can be laid up in the hospital and can't get any sort of security." Part of that is indicative to all the racial divide in this country that's still going on today. Pac talked about all that, and I think he suffered from that as well.

It was the scariest six nights of my life. There were undercover FBI agents, the police weren't helping, I got one of the death threats.

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Pac was in an induced coma the entire time, because every time he came to he'd try to pull the plug and get out of bed. I stayed every day, and I went to get his mom or whoever flew in from the airport. We had a hotel nearby where I shared a room with his biological father. I would stay there a few hours during the day and keep watch at the hospital at night. I was imagining that a bunch of gangbangers would run through there with Uzis and shoot the place up. I didn't grow up with guns or any of that shit, but I was a scrapper, and I felt that if there were any questionable people, I could attack them.

There was a fat old white nurse that would come out and give me a progress report. One night she came out and said, "That Tupac, he's a fighter. I almost lost him and got him right back." I'm not 100 percent sure why—I had plenty of opportunities to go see him—but I didn't because I was afraid to see him. Then on the fifth night, that same nurse was like, "Baby, you've been here this whole time, why don't you go in and see your friend?"

Following the Bruce Seldon vs. Mike Tyson match at the MGM Grand, a fight erupted by the gold tree in the hotel lobby between Tupac Shakur and Orlando Anderson, a Compton Crips gang member. The fight, which also involved members of Suge Knight

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I went in there, and it was just me and him. It was a dark room, and he had the tube down his throat. He was basically naked except for the couple of sheets they had him covered with. His head was swollen twice the size, and everywhere there was a bullet wound—there was gauze on each and blood was seeping through. He was missing a finger, so that was bandaged up. I walked up to him, and I put my hand on his arm. He was ice cold, I'd imagine because of all the fluids going through him. I said a little prayer, and I walked out. And that was the last time I ever saw him.

He was like my little brother. He was someone who I felt the responsibility to do whatever I could for him to survive. And I don't mean the shooting—I mean all the drama that he was surrounded with before with Death Row, and all the people he was surrounded with.

On the sixth night was when the Fruit of Islam showed up, and suddenly everyone showed up. It seemed kind of crazy that it took that long, and everyone was like, "Let's go take care of Tupac." I sort of felt I couldn't do anything more there. Tracy had left a few days earlier to go back to L.A. On the sixth night, the nurse finally said that he was 13 percent better. That's when I decided to go back, because that's the first time I thought, "This motherfucker has nine lives. Maybe he is going to pull through."

I went in there, and it was just me and him. It was a dark room, and he had the tube down his throat. He was basically naked except for the couple of sheets they had him covered with.

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I went back to LA, and the next day, I remember hearing Theo on The Beat say that Pac had passed. We were on our way to set, and everyone in the van started crying.

I've heard all the rumors, from it could be Suge, it could be P. Diddy who paid for it, it could be the fight with Orlando Anderson. You know, at the end of the day, Tupac had a voice. The one thing he didn't have was subtlety. If he had continued on the same path he had been on, someone would have taken him out. He was disruptive, and he was a threat. He was a threat to the establishment. I don't know who took him out. But whoever took him out took out someone very important who could have done a lot for African Americans and humanity as a whole. At 25, he had accomplished more than some people do in a lifetime. One of the last meetings I had with him, he said, "People aren't going to recognize me in six months. I'm going to act like such an adult." He was ready for a transformation; he wanted to be more than a stereotype.